They watched Millwood traverse the scorched terrain, strolling almost jauntily. His silhouette grew smaller and blacker the closer he got to the dome. There was no sign of activity inside the city, no blaring alarms, no deadly fleet of drone birds, no army of silver-suited Zaps. Only hauntingly beautiful edifices lit by the four tubes of light.
“Come on,” DeVontay said. “We need to get closer so we can see what happens.”
“Haven’t you seen enough death for one day?”
“Millwood found something to live for, all alone in Wilkesboro in the middle of a Zap tribe. K.C. found something to live for when everybody in Stonewall was dead. Private Kelly kept going after losing her lover and her fingers. Who are we to feel sorry for ourselves? We’re still breathing, and that means we’re still fighting.”
DeVontay clawed his way up the muddy bank and jogged after Millwood, staying in a crouch. When he looked back a few seconds later, Franklin was following, but not without a string of curses.
They were about a hundred yards behind Millwood when he reached the dome. There was no visible entrance, and indeed the streets didn’t even intersect with the curved walls of the dome. Meticulously arranged landscaping ringed the base of the dome, but the vegetation was unnatural—too crisp, too monochromatic, too integrated, too perfect.
Nothing was visible on the streets or in the tall buildings, and the only movement was that caused by the alternating strobe of lightning and shadows. DeVontay marveled at the imposing architecture, which possessed uniformity yet featured rectangles of varying heights. The windows appeared to be made of the same substance as the dome, as if they would curve outward and pop if you blew on them hard enough.
“He’s reached it,” Franklin said. “Get ready for the fireworks.”
Millwood reached out a hand as if to knock or just to feel the texture of the dome. Lightning raced down toward him from the central pole atop the dome. DeVontay expected the electrostatic charge to leap into the hippie’s hand and fry him on the spot, revealing his skeletal outline like in an old Warner Brothers cartoon.
Instead, the lightning retreated, and Millwood pushed his hand inside the yielding substance. DeVontay couldn’t tell whether his hand actually penetrated or the material merely stretched around his hand like a latex glove. But then Millwood stepped into the dome and for a moment appeared to struggle against the material. Then it spread out and embraced him, pulling him inside.
Millwood took a few steps across the brittle, unmoving landscaping and turned to them. He flung his arms wide and mouthed what looked like “See? Told you so!”
“Damn,” Franklin muttered. “I guess if you believe something hard enough, it’ll come true.”
“What are we waiting for? Let’s go find Rachel.”
Franklin was reluctant to touch the slick, filmy surface of the dome. But DeVontay was impatient, so he duplicated Millwood’s effort of pushing his body against the dome. For a moment he felt submerged in warm oil and then he was standing beside Millwood, looking back at the darkness beyond the dome where Franklin stood with blue light limning his face.
He realized why the landscaping looked so brittle—it was as fabricated as everything else in the city. He stomped it with his boot but it didn’t yield an inch. There was no movement in the city besides the rapid pulsing of light in the tubes that descended from the upper curve of the dome into the tops of various buildings.
“No welcoming committee,” DeVontay said. “I’d be insulted, except it’s nice not to be noticed.”
“This place is weird, man,” Millwood said. “Like somebody’s idea of a city but without the intention of people actually living in it.”
“Feel that vibration under our feet? Like a big motor humming away?”
“I hope we’re not sitting on a massive plasma sink. One of those explosions is enough for this go-round on the karmic wheel.”
DeVontay motioned Franklin to enter. The elderly man shouldered his rifle, frowned, and put one hand on his cap before stepping through. The material stretched around him, momentarily making him look like a giant doll or mannequin, and then he pushed through. The passage left no discernible change to the dome.
“Now I know what an embryo feels like sliding out of the chute,” Franklin said. “I don’t remember the first time.”
“Are we sure this place is even alive?” DeVontay asked, looking up at the sleek, silent buildings.
“Maybe it’s the perfect trap. Destroy all the human cities, then lay out these shiny little domes like roach motels. Humans come in but they don’t come out. Problem solved.”
DeVontay pushed his hand against the dome, then exited and re-entered. “Works both ways.”
“Yeah. Well, I hope the dome keeps out monster centipedes, man-eating dogs, and giant shitterhawks. Not many hiding places in here.”
“No convenience stores, either,” Millwood said. “I’m out of smokes.”
“What now, gentlemen?” DeVontay asked.
“Follow the Yellowbrick Road,” Franklin said. “And find the little wizard running the show. I’ve got a feeling it’s that back-stabbing little mutant we all know and love: Kokona.”
“She couldn’t have built all this,” DeVontay said. “Even with advanced technology and lots of willing labor, such as telepathically connected Zaps following orders, the city couldn’t be built in days. Someone’s been working on this a long time.”
“Maybe it was built for her,” Millwood said.
Franklin walked out of the fake alloy landscaping and onto the street. DeVontay and Millwood followed, the deep thrumming under their feet like the heartbeat of a particularly massive robot.
The streets ran in perfect parallels, each block about forty yards long. There were no markings and the buildings had no doors or windows on the lower floors. DeVontay tried pushing against a couple of them, just in case they were flexible like the dome, but the alloy held firm.
“Do you think they know we’re here?” Franklin asked.
“They knew it before we knew it,” DeVontay said. “The Zaps have been two steps ahead of us ever since they started evolving. Almost like we’re just sport to them, creatures they hunt and raise for amusement.”
“But they had to learn from us,” Franklin said. “Look at this city. They copied ours. Maybe they can figure out how to tap electromagnetic energy as a power source, but they don’t have any imagination.”
“Guys,” Millwood said from behind them, so artificially calm that a chill rolled along DeVontay’s spine.
He turned. Behind them on the street was a monster that resembled a deer—massive neck and chest, thick legs ending in broad hooves, and two gleaming, multi-pronged horns that curved out from the broad forehead. The eyes were small, piercing yellow lights that pulsed in sync with the plasma tubes high overhead. Blood coated one of the wicked horns.
The thing was cast entirely of the same silver alloy as the buildings and streets. Its articulated limbs and joints flexed as it swayed back and forth as if readying to charge. It was modeled after the bloodthirsty mutant deer that roamed the Blue Ridge Mountains near the bunker.
Franklin was right. Zaps had no imagination.
But they were damned good at duplicating the worst the apocalypse had to offer.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“Why did you bring us here?” Rachel asked.
The real question, the one she wasn’t sure the Conglomerate could plumb from the depths of her mind, was: Why haven’t you killed us already?
She directed her question toward the Zap baby in the center of the arrangement, but she assumed they were all equals. Whether or not the half-Zap hybrids behind them were part of the power structure, they clearly participated in the planning. That suggested the carriers were necessary, and on some level the babies were still dependent despite their advanced technology.
“You already know the answer to that, Rachel,” Kokona said.
“Sure. Zap evolution may be intellectually and scienti
fically upward, but it’s pathetically regressive in the most important areas. You kill what you don’t understand. Or maybe you’re just too lazy to manage it.”
“That’s what you do in war,” Goldberg said, still wielding his weapon despite its impotence. Rachel expected him to charge at any moment and smash those tiny skulls like china cups.
“We aren’t destroying, Rachel,” the Conglomerate said, their mouths moving in unison. “We’re replacing. We’re improving.”
Rachel swept an arm out to the scorched, crumbling, parched, and poisoned world beyond the dome. “You call that an improvement? You call that better?”
“Not better for you, perhaps. But you—at least, your fellow humans, with whom you no longer quite belong—take such a homocentric view of the universe. What makes you think this world was built for you? What made you so special as to think you deserved dominion over it?”
“At least we didn’t destroy and poison it.”
The Conglomerate actually laughed, an abrasive, echoing sound that was like a mockery of joy. “That’s all you did, from the moment your ancestors first captured fire from a lightning storm and brought it into their caves.”
“We figured it out as it went,” Rachel said. “Sure, we had genocide, slavery, and world war, but we also built schools and hospitals and churches. We developed social programs to feed the hungry and care for the elderly. Maybe we weren’t perfect like you, but we tried.”
“Why are you taking the human side?” Kokona asked her. The baby looked over at Goldberg. “Maybe they should be debating him?”
“Nothing to talk about,” Goldberg said. “As soon as I get my hands on their little throats, I’m going to squeeze until their heads pop off.”
It was only then that Rachel could detect the clear shield that walled Goldberg from the others. The cylinder material seemed to have a morphing quality that allowed it to act as either a solid, liquid, or gas. Whether the transformation was controlled by telepathy or some sort of hidden technology, Rachel couldn’t guess.
“See the rage you harbor inside?” the Conglomerate said. “Kill, kill, kill. That’s your answer.”
“What about all the killing Zaps have done?” Rachel asked.
“We don’t acknowledge that term you use for us. It was created by humans. We never asked for names, for it’s just another sign of your destructive, egotistical thinking. We simply are.”
“Then why does Kokona have a name?” Rachel pointed in turn to each of the three carriers standing behind the mutant babies. “I’ll bet you and you and you still remember your human names. All you babies were named by someone when you were born. Born human, in case you’ve forgotten.”
“We can’t help our origins, any more than the universe could resist creating itself with a massive explosion. You call us ‘The Conglomerate’—yet you can’t be sure whether you thought of it yourself or we implanted the name in your brain.”
“You said you needed no name.”
“We don’t. You need a name so you can comprehend us. Once again, your perceptions are framed by your homocentric view of the world.”
“But my perceptions aren’t even my own,” Rachel said, feeling the angry heat rise on the surface of her skin despite the moderate temperature. “You alter what I see, you disable my telepathic abilities, and you force me to carry this monster —” she shook the papoose containing Kokona “—to you.”
Kokona looked up at her with neither fear nor affection. She was just a baby. Something that had once been human and then had undergone changes beyond her control. Nobody asked to be born. No living thing ever had a choice in the matter.
And perhaps they had no choice in what they became, either.
Rachel searched for all the emotions she’d once harbored for the child—pity, fascination, protectiveness, sorrow, pleasure, and most of all love. But she wasn’t even sure she could love anymore. Maybe she truly had lost all humanity.
She looked up toward the dome overhead and tried to reach beyond it. She focused on an unseen, omniscient being in the sky in which she had once believed. She strived for that most intimate telepathy known as prayer and came away with nothing. No spiritual detour from this nightmare was available.
Messages from hell could never reach God’s ears.
What about DeVontay?
She realized with a shock that she could barely visualize his face. She hadn’t thought of him in some time, so absorbed was she in the strange journey into the Blue City.
If I lose him, if I lose the feelings I have, then I lose everything I once was. I won’t be Rachel Wheeler anymore. I’ll just be…
She looked at the bland, genderless faces of those standing behind their tiny owners and puppet masters.
…the Conglomerate.
Goldberg paced back and forth behind his invisible bars, occasionally punching the material to see if it was still there. Beyond him, the night stretched outside the dome, the last of the sunset throwing a red smudge along the horizon. The aurora crawled above the flickering lightning that traced jagged arcs along the dome, a dizzying light show conjured by nature’s new alchemy.
“You’ve seen your world,” the Conglomerate said. “What it has become. And now you see what we have built. Outside, all is ruin and death. Inside, we can create all the life we need.”
Create life? They’re insane.
Or perhaps their minds were so far beyond Rachel’s she couldn’t comprehend their genius.
“This isn’t life,” Rachel said. “You’ve destroyed life as we know it.”
“Oh, but we haven’t, remember?”
“Yeah,” Goldberg shouted, his words slightly muffled by the barrier. “You just decided not to save it. Arrogant little shits.”
“We have decided to save it,” the Conglomerate said. “We’ve improved it. Like the creature on the street below that relieved your friends of their pain and suffering. Why bring savage, erratic monsters into our midst when we can build ones that we can control?”
Goldberg pounded the invisible film of organic glass with both fists. “They weren’t suffering. They took the end of the world on the world’s terms and decided to keep moving forward. They made the best of it. Unlike you, they knew the pleasure of a sunrise, the taste of a crisp apple in the fall, the chill of a snowflake on their faces. They knew the soft love of a warm human, which is something you miniature, sexless freaks will never understand, no matter how many minds you read.”
“We don’t need to understand your clumsy procreation procedures,” the Conglomerate said. “It’s far cleaner to manufacture a replacement. For all your concerns about the environment, you failed to accept that you were the ultimate cause of your own destruction. The solar storms just happened to accelerate the inevitable.”
“You can’t replace me.” Goldberg pointed a finger at Rachel. “Or her. She may have changed, but she still holds on to what she was. As long as we have that, you can never replace us.”
A sibilant hiss of compressed air erupted behind them. The three holes in the floor returned, along with the clear cylinders that had carried Rachel, Kokona, and Goldberg to this penultimate level of the building.
Kokona emitted the trademark giggle that always heralded an unpleasant surprise. How did this psychopathic baby expect to fit in among these cold, detached overlords of the Blue City?
The first figure came into view, a small, silver oblate shape that rose up through the cylinder. Then more of it was revealed, a full face crafted of alloy sporting an etched beard and scars on its cheeks. When the torso came into view, the hinged arms lifted, the articulated fingers folded, and the metallic fists pounded on the cylinder in imitation of Goldberg.
“We haven’t given you a gun, as you can see,” the Conglomerate said. “This is an improved version.”
Goldberg staggered backward as the fabricated version of himself stood stiffly, hands again by its sides as if awaiting instructions. The hole in the floor vanished again, once more becoming a sol
id sheet of the Zaps’ advanced amalgam. Then two oval slots opened on either side of the pitted, humped nose and small orbs radiated the same yellow glow of the overhead lightning.
“What the…no fucking way,” Goldberg croaked. “No.”
“A better world,” the Conglomerate said. “Every piece of it.”
Rachel was astounded by the meticulous detail of the figure. The metal Goldberg was no clumsy robot, however. There was a fluidity about its features that suggested it was just as intransigent as the cylinder material, as if it could be solid one moment and gas or liquid the next. She’d witnessed the drone birds repairing themselves using 3-D printing and laser technologies, but this advancement bordered on the profane and diabolic.
They’ve been desecrating, mocking, and imitating human life all along, even while they reject its worth. And now this final humility…
Goldberg scooped up his rifle and made one last desperate, infuriated smash against the barrier before flinging the weapon away again in disgust.
“Do we need him any longer?” the Conglomerate asked.
At first Rachel thought the question was directed at her, but then Kokona said, “No. He’s accomplished his task. He helped bring us safely here.”
“Shall we fail to let him destroy himself?”
“Humans are obsessed with the concept of free will,” Kokona said. “It’s an essential part of their identities, this belief that they have influence over the events of their own lives and those around them.”
“What are you talking about?” Rachel asked, fixated on the metal man that was as alive as anything she’d ever seen.
Goldberg turned toward the dying sunset. He threw a glance at Rachel, gave a sad shake of his head, and walked to the wrap-around window. He stuck his middle finger up over his shoulder and said, with a calm that rivaled his previous rage, “I hope you enjoy your reign in hell.”
Then he stepped off the edge of the floor and silently dropped out of sight toward the street far below.
Rachel shouted his name but he was already gone. The Conglomerate faces were as impassive as ever, although perhaps their eyes sparked just a little more frantically.
Directive 17: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller (Next Book 4) Page 16